Things we know about Laurie Penny: She’s British. She’s a writer. She wears pink wigs. Oh yeah, SHE WAS SAVED FROM ONCOMING TRAFFIC BY RYAN MUTHA F*CKIN GOSLING!At 6:28PM last night Laurie Penny tweeted out, “I literally, LITERALLY just got saved from a car by Ryan Gosling. Literally. That actually just happened.”
So of course the internet was/is ALL over it (here, here, and here for example), thanks to the pre-existing fascination with Gosling and the story making his life further read like fan fiction. But when I started digging in to decide if I could come up with enough Baby Goose jokes to make this post worth it I became fascinated at how in less that twenty-four hours Penny went from breathlessly sharing the event on Twitter to full on hatin’ on America’s obsession with celebrity.She actually just released a piece for Gawker about the whole incident and the media hysteria that followed, pretty much rendering my post here moot. But whatever. She’s closing in on 40K followers, is apparently unaware that British tabloids exist, and this sequence of tweets will one day be used in a case study.Image via YouTube

I tried for Deadspin I think…before I knew anything and assuming I know anything now. I had an account and couldn’t comment, something that seems fucked to me. Then the whole hacking thing happened and even though I couldn’t comment, my info was stolen. So that was nice.

Laurie Penny’s a pretty good writer, her column for the new stateman is a good read
She’s had to deal with a lot of mysogynist hatefull wankers over the last couple of months I hope she doesn’t get much stick for those tweets

From the little bit I’ve read of hers she is definitely a very good writer. I simply take issue with a Brit (really any Western Europeaner) sticking their nose up and vilifying American culture for celebrity obsession like it’s only our problem and not a first world problem in general. Just a way too convenient way to make herself feel superior.

I didn’t really get the impression that she was sticking her nose up at it more that she was annoyed about being pestered about it. I’m Irish , I agree that celebrity obsession is probably as bad in the UK and Ireland as it is America. but again I think she was reacting more to the attention she’s getting as she’s probably not used to it.

Slide 9 above and the below passage from the Gawker piece are what rubbed me the wrong way. Not that they aren’t true, it’s just that in my experience the UK is exactly the same way yet it reads to me like she’s playing the intellectual European card.

Maybe I’m just a little tender to the subject but that’s how I interpreted.

“Americans are very strange. They can and do hyperventilate about the most everyday happenings as if they are the most important thing in the world, and then they act completely normal when public conversations are had about war on Iran and war on women’s bodies and when Rick Santorum is considered a serious presidential candidate. The real heroes I’ve met in America are risking everything to make sure that the United States doesn’t slide further into bigotry, inequality and violence whilst everyone is distracted by the everyday doings of celebrities.”